Harry Ryan has two first names (sybarite) wrote in repose,
Log: Harry's House, Marta/Harry
The house had Harry's father written all over it. Even the bills were diverted to RyCorp accountants for handling, and the team of interior designers were the same that detailed his father's penthouse back in the city. Ten bedrooms and three pools, this was a vacation house. Harry could envision his father spending warm, summer months at a house like this one. Always on his phone so that he still had one foot in the business world, no matter what time zone he was in. There was something fun about the lake house that hadn't existed at his father's place in the city. Maybe it was just the water, the pools and the dock that stretched out to the lake, lined with boats and jet skis and canoes made useless by these winter months. It was supposed to be fun, something to distract Harry from the horrors of Halloween. It was a good idea, and to be fair, it had works for a couple of weeks.
It wasn't working so well anymore. The house was nothing like his father's place in city, and yet Harry was reminded of the man at every turn. He couldn't figure out why at first, but he ultimately settled on the decoration and furniture of the place. Same design team, remember? Everything was expensive and cold, unlived in, untouched. At his father's place, there were whole sets of furniture that got dusted but were never to be sat upon. There were dish sets too 'special' to use, paintings wrapped up in brown paper, too priceless to be set upon the walls. It was a very bottled up way to live, and Harry was feeling it all here at the lake house with ten bedrooms just to himself. His father would have insisted that there was no other way to live, and Harry really couldn't remember the little apartment above the arcade, so it felt like the truth.
It felt like a Ryan-truth, which wasn't necessarily the truth for everybody else, but as his father was always quick to point out, they were nothing like everybody else. It was elitist, but so was the lake house with it's staff of six and it's cellar of vintage wine that Harry's palette would be incapable of discerning from the swill that came in a cardboard box. There were Viennese sofas and Persian rugs. Soft, classical music seemed to seep through every room, although Harry had yet to discover where the stereo was located(which was probably or the best and a strategy of his father's). All the better to separate himself from that life above the arcade.
When that knock came to the door, Harry was in the house's study. Everything was hardwood and polished leather and very intellectual. There were antique world maps in frames upon the walls. The desk where Harry sat actually had a fucking quill in an ink pot, which he was scrutinizing with a perplexed and disapproving expression.
He had on a dinner jacket of navy blue, although the white shirt beneath it was mussed and untucked. His hair was clean and gelled, and his face was freshly shaved, but he hadn't bothered with wearing shoes. Harry was together and also not. He wasn't drunk yet, but there was some dark liquor in a glass on the desk, so he was working on it.
Harry looked up when the butler showed Marta in to the study. He stood from the desk in a hospitable gesture, and smiled a little when he stepped around the desk to cross hardwood floors and greet her. It'd been a long time. "Hey, you liked the jacket." He motioned with a hand to her outfit.